It has long been known that an increased rate of response to mail solicitation can be achieved if the original, soliciting mailing includes provision to simplify the actions required by the recipient in responding to the original mailing. Thus, such mailings conventionally employ return envelopes, return postcards, etc. which are most often franked or provided with a postage stamp so that the recipient need not even concern himself with the payment of postage.
Indeed, with the advent of mailers as proposed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,104,799, virtually an entire new industry was created.
While mailers of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,104,799 have been very successful for their intended purpose, they are basically envelope type mailers provided with return envelopes and thus may be more expensive to manufacture and more expensive to post than is necessary in those instances where postcard type assemblies could be used.
It is, of course, known to provide so-called "two-way" postcards. In a typical two-way postcard, a single piece of card stock of twice the size of an ordinary postcard is folded in half upon itself and the edges remote from the fold of the two resulting leaves stapled together. On one of the facing interior surfaces, a return mailing address together with franking is provided. On one of the exterior surfaces of the construction, and generally that which is on the leaf other than that containing the interior return address, there will be provided a franking area as well as a mailing address receiving area. The other exterior surface may be provided with indicia requesting data, etc.
The postcard is mailed to a recipient who hopefully will respond to the data requesting indicia, break the stapled connection between the leaves and either reverse fold the card and restaple the same to expose the return address while hiding the original address or simply remove and discard the leaf bearing the original address to result in a return postcard bearing only the return address and the #data.
Where the card is reverse folded and reassembled, the recipient must perform a positive act, usually stapling, which may retard the rate of the response. Where the leaf of the card bearing the original address is removed and discarded, the identity of the original recipient must be inscribed on the data bearing portion of the return card which requires an additional operation either by the mailing organization or by the recipient since such address must also appear on the exterior surface of the original assemblage bearing the franking designation.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems.